


Shuffle Meme (Take 3!)

by melindajane



Category: HIM (Band), RPF - Fandom, Viva La Bam RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M, Songfic, shuffle meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melindajane/pseuds/melindajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a five song shuffle meme going around the Vam community. Not beta-ed, so read at your own risk!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shuffle Meme (Take 3!)

**Wild Horses - Bush**   


 

There’s been something different going on with him lately. He hates to say that it started when Dunn died, because that is a disgusting cliché and he’d never want to use his best friend’s memory like that, but it’s also sort of the truth. He’s still somewhere on a downward spiral, still drinking too much and not caring what happens to his body, but he’s a little more alert and aware of what he’s doing to other people. He’s kinder to his parents, less reckless in the media, and most important, he hasn’t set Novak on fire since it happened. 

The art thing isn’t exactly new, but he’s focused on it right now. It gives him something do when otherwise he would be raiding bars and fucking strangers. It takes away the itch in his hands to break something beautiful.

He doesn’t entertain for a second that he’s any good at this. He doesn’t think he’s going to change the world with his art, make any money, or even make a headline. What he’s doing is trying something different. Not trying to escape the downward spiral exactly, just taking a few brave steps up the ladder.

Gee and Frantz take him a little too seriously about the whole thing. Gee keeps taking high resolution photos of the finger paintings he’s making, and Frantz keeps quoting Clement Greenberg like Bam should know who the fuck he is. Leave it to the both of them to think this is progress. Novak just keeps looking at him sideways, wondering if there’s some kind of pay out at the end of the tunnel.

As his gallery showing approaches, even Ape is all over it. She’s so supportive, talking about what she’s going to wear and where Phil is taking her out to eat before hand. He wishes he could say he was more excited about it than he is, but that would be a lie. He already fakes his enthusiasm enough on Twitter. He wonders if the four fans he probably has left know what a fucking faker he is.

The gallery is stiff and weary of him, but he threw down a shit ton of money as a security deposit, and promised them a bigger percentage than any starving artist ever would. He does his best to hang shit straight, to hide the ugly ass ones in the back, and not to step on Gee’s toes. Because the thing is, he’s sharing the space with Gee. And Gee is an actual artist, one who talks about negative space and exposures when all you care about is tits and ass, and where your next beer is coming from. He almost calls the whole thing off at the last minute, but Frantz throws his arm around Bam’s neck and quotes Picasso. 

The showing is pretty lame, Bam decides. Most of the people who showed up either did so out of obligation to Bam, or because they wanted to get their picture taken with him. Bam isn’t going to deny them - they took time out of their busy schedule to come out and look at his hideous paintings and didn’t laugh in his face - after that, they deserve a parting gift. 

He’s about to take off early for the night, go home to his cat and eat Cocoa Puffs until breakfast, when he sees someone walk in the door. He does a double take, because seriously, he’s not that drunk. He had two glasses of complementary watered down wine, and that was hours ago. But it’s really Ville. It’s really Ville standing in a gallery in West Chester hugging Ape and adjusting his scarf. It’s really Ville declining a glass of wine and walking around the wall to see what Bam’s created.

Bam doesn’t know why he’s doing it, but he casually follows a few steps behind Ville. He watches his reaction to each piece, flinching a little when Ville doesn’t linger as long as some other people did. Because as much as Bam doubts his talent, he wants Ville to like this - like him. Because ever since the first day they met, Bam’s been trying and failing to prove to Ville that he’s someone worth knowing. Half the time Ville seems more entertained and engaged by Novak, and that fucking hurts. 

When he gets to the end, the part where Bam’s paintings end and Gee’s photos begin, Bam bites his lip. He doesn’t know if he wants to say hello or not. 

“You know, it’s very distracting having you follow me around while I’m looking at your art. How am I supposed to judge you, when you’re quite obviously judging me at the same time?”

When Ville turns around there’s a wide smile on his face and Bam has to looks down at his feet. He was caught, that much is for sure, but he also doesn’t have a witty reply. 

“Yeah. Sorry about that,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck where his hair is too long. He usually has a hood up to hide it, but he made it a point to dress up a little for the occasion. He didn’t mind it before, but now he’s feeling a little bit exposed and a lot more out of place than he did an hour ago. 

“They’re great. What you’re doing is great,” Ville says, and Bam just nods his head kind of dumbly. He stares at the bridge of Ville’s nose so he can fake eye contact without making it. 

Before Bam can say anything, Novak joins the mix cursing loudly and hugging Ville like Bam only wishes he had done. There’s nowhere he really has to be, but Bam points in the other direction and makes an excuse. He starts talking to one of the guys who owns the gallery as his cover. The guy looks about as excited to talk to Bam as Bam is when the police show up at his door before noon. 

The night goes on and although Bam isn’t quite keeping tabs, he knows Ville hasn’t left yet. Mostly because Ville would never leave without saying goodbye. 

In the end, he gets blindsided. He sneaks out front for a cigarette (something he’s sure the gallery loves, there are cigarette butts littering the whole front of the building) and Ville follows him right out the door. He’s not quite crowding him, but standing a little too close for Bam’s comfort.

“I’m still not smoking, but I find it’s a bit easier if I live vicariously through others. Most people say it smells like shit after you quit, but I don’t think so.”

Bam smiles and basically blows smoke right in Ville’s face on his first drag. Ville looks delighted.

“What are you doing here,” Bam finally asks, unable to find a nicer way to ask.

Ville shrugs at him and plays awkwardly with the end of his scarf. “The band’s still not playing yet. I’ve written a hundred songs, but Gas isn’t ready to practice. I’m on hiatus.”

“So why here?”

Ville smiles again and looks right at Bam. “I hate LA. I hate being sober in LA. I was going to go see Kat, maybe get some work done, but she told me about your show. She wanted to be here, but couldn’t. But you see…I could. And I know you didn’t ask, and you might not think you need it, but it seemed like you could use a friend.”

Ville reaches forward and fixes Bam’s hair for him. Bam hates it, hates that this is all done out of pity, but Ville’s right, Bam’s not in the business of asking for help or declining it.

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” Ville whispers, in a little sing song that makes Bam’s heart beat faster. 

“You staying with me,” Bam asks, taking everything as it is, like he’s been trying to do since he turned over his new leaf.

“If you’ll have me. I might be just what you needed.”

Bam just laughs, stomps out his cigarette, and turns his back on Ville. “Can’t believe you quoted Jagger at me. Seriously thought you’d try something better. Iggy, maybe? Bowie at the very least. I should make you get a hotel just for that.”

“I could quote Justin Bieber at you and you’d still like me best,” Ville claims. And he’s right, Bam hates that he’s right, but he just keeps walking into the gallery with Ville hot on his heels.

“Whatever. But I guess you can stay. You gonna play some of those songs you got in that pretty head of yours while you’re in town?”

And just like that, things are okay. They’re still friends, they’re joking around, and Ville’s not looking over his shoulder for someone else to talk to. 

Maybe this time things will go right. Bam’s been trying to stay positive lately. So if he just stays focused, forgets about everyone else’s bullshit, maybe he can do this right. Maybe he can convince Ville that he’s worth it, worth staying around for. 

**Spit The Dark - Empires**   


To be honest, Ville feels pretty guilty about the whole thing. He’s over thirty and he should totally have his shit together, but obviously he doesn’t. He’s between records, somewhere lost between living off the last and actually getting his ass in gear to make the next. 

And the thing is, he knows that things could be worse. He could be in a bar knocking back his sorrows with the booze he’s not supposed to touch, but he’s not. He still goes to bars, but only to socialize. But sometimes socialization does him no good. He ends up running into problems. Problems like Seth.

Seth just turned eighteen six weeks ago and he’s on his first trip away from his mother. He keeps looking around, suspecting that someone’s going to kick him out for underage drinking or ask him what his mother would say about the way he knocks back a shot of whiskey like he’s been doing it since he’s fourteen. Ville shouldn’t find that attractive - not at all. 

But the thing is…Seth is sort of irresistible. Ville has always been kind of easy for free spirits who have a touch of naivety paired with an overactive desire to please. 

Ville’s still not quite sure how they’ve been introduced or how Seth has been invited to drink sloppily at Ville’s table in the back of one of the lesser known pubs in Helsinki, but he has. He somehow cracked a wall in Ville’s overprotective friends, so Ville gathers that he must be alright. There must be something special about him.

For the first half of the evening, Seth just sort of falls into a bottle and nods in the perceived correct places, and laughs when everybody else does. Ville is just about to feel sorry for him when he leans back in his chair, scratches his balls like he’s not even ashamed, and sizes Ville up. 

“You’re awfully sassy for a guy who’s pushing forty and drinking water in a bar.”

He gets the whole table roaring with laughter. Ville kind of gapes at him. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘don’t you know who I am,’ but to be honest it’s sort of refreshing that the guy doesn’t know who he is at all.

“It’s been a while since anybody’s laid out the infamous Ville Valo,” someone at the table remarks.

Seth just rolls his shoulders and orders another round with a simple wave of his finger. Ville wishes his life were still that easy.

“Forty,” he says, sounding honestly insulted. He sort of is. Because granted he passed the big three-oh a few years ago, and he’s aging gracefully if he does say himself, he still dyes his hair because rockstars (even those who are on hiatus) should not rock the salt and pepper style. He also has crow’s feet. That is just…that is a fact of life. 

“Whatever, dude. That’s not an insult. Old dudes can be hot. Look at that Sean Connery guy. People still want to fuck him.”

And the thing is, he’s sort of right. People remark that Sean Connery is a handsome dude. But those people, they’re checking out his face. They don’t want to see Sean Connery naked. They don’t want to see his loose skin and graying chest hair. They like the idea of him, of being handsome, he’s not…not _sexy._ And Ville very much wants to be sexy. 

The conversation is a blessing, because it is provocative. For the next hour or so they talk about aging gracefully and the question of sexiness. For the bolder females at the table it becomes a top list of ‘over forty’ who they would legitimately want to bang. For Ville, it becomes a reminder of how young this Seth kid is, because he doesn’t know who a good half of the nominees are. 

“Who are you, anyway,” Seth asks, when his eyes get just a little droopy. Ville’s been on the fence for the past ten minutes about suggesting to one of the more maternal ladies at the table to perhaps call him a cab, but for some reason he’s not quite ready to let go of him.

“I love it when we get new blood,” someone whispers happily. Ville kindly rolls his eyes and goes to take a piss. He hasn’t even zipped up his trousers yet and he can already hear the jukebox crooning one of his songs. Sometimes he hates his life, and his friends. Oh well, he says to himself, at least there isn’t photographic evidence to go with the songs.

Except for there is, of course, because Ville’s life is just perfect. In this modern day cellphones can do more than Ville’s virus infected lap top. (To be fair, that’s his fault. He tends to check out more porn than anything else on it, so he doesn’t really get the luxury of complaining.)

The first thing the kid actually says to Ville is, “Dude, dude, you know Bam Margera? Fuck, when I was in middle school we used to make tapes of ourselves jumping into thorn bushes to mail into MTV, even though the disclaimer told us not to. Bastards never called us back, but I swear, those were like the best times of my life.

_Middle school,_ Ville thinks. It’s so painful. It makes him feel painfully and disgustingly old. 

For the rest of the night the kid drunkenly gushes about Bam, about his favorite stunts, and how he had no idea that Bam didn’t invent the Heartagram. He looks mildly disappointed that he didn’t. The kid has some hero worship.

But that’s about the time that Ville’s brain starts to click into place. The kid…he’s just. He’s so…

He’s got these curls, okay? Little chestnut curls that the kid looks pissed off at. They look damaged, as if maybe he tried to flat iron them out, but they’re stubborn and constant. And his eyes are half shut and a little bloodshot from trying to keep up with a table full of ex and current alcoholics, but they’re still achingly blue and curious. 

And he might not be covered in tattoos and followed by an entourage of fuck ups, but Bam wasn’t either when Ville first met him. 

Last call comes before Ville is chivalrous enough to tell one of the ladies to get Seth home safe. And when they’re out front dividing themselves into cars and cabs, Seth stumbles at the curb.

“Where are you staying, love,” one of the girls asks.

And when the kid can’t produce a key card or remember the name of the hostel he’s staying in, Ville decides that it’s not his fault that Seth fell into his hands.

So he decides to take him home, sort of like he’s a puppy rather than a teenager, and he doesn’t even feel put out when the guy droops down and rests his head in Ville’s lap for the ride. While he cards his hand through those wild curls, he’s hoping Seth doesn’t puke on his jeans. Bam did that once or twice over the years. 

Ville’s not a total dick. Even though he fantasized about fucking the kid in the foyer of his tower the whole ride home, he doesn’t do it. Instead he does a familiar push and pull routine to get him to his guest room. He lies him on his side on Night Rider sheets and goes back to his own room for a wank.

He falls asleep exactly four minutes after climax. As he’s sliding into dream land, barely conscious enough to throw the tissue full of his emission towards the trash and tuck his soft cock back into his briefs, he curses Seth. When he was younger, he didn’t have to nap after he came. Pushing forty, he thinks.

He wakes up to someone straddling his thighs and rubbing morning stubble against his bare stomach. His bare stomach that does not have loose skin, he reminds himself. 

“Hmmph,” Ville grumbles, because he is most definitely not a morning person.

“Hey,” someone says with a gravelly voice. It’s Seth, and Ville probably knew that from the beginning, but he still opens one eye to question what he’s doing.

“What are you doing,” he finally vocalizes, as his entire abdomen is tingling not quite unpleasantly from the guy’s stubble.

“Well see, here’s the thing. You kind of took me home last night, but I was too drunk to appreciate it. And I just want to say this before shit gets kind of awkward, okay?”

Ville just stays quiet. He feels like that’s his part in this.

“I know those guys at the bar told me you were a big deal or whatever, but I’m not really impressed. I wanted to blow you before they said anything. To be honest, my favorite band is My Chemical Romance. So even though you’ve probably met Ozzy Osborne and banged a bunch of groupies, I don’t care. Unless you have like, genital warts or something. That I might care about.”

Ville rolls his eyes and fails to fight off a smile. “I don’t have genital warts. Or Chlamydia. I did have crabs once, but that was probably before you were born.”

The kid just beams at him. Ville notices that the morning sunlight reflects off of his stupid nose ring, and that’s sort of endearing. He reaches down and runs his hand through that hair again. It’s kind of dirty, and it definitely smells like smoke, but that’s achingly familiar. He’s a little disappointed to look further down and see unmarked skin everywhere. It makes him different than Bam…not that he was comparing. Or not that he should be comparing, at least. 

“You’re seriously not that old, dude. And like…hot. Completely hot.”

The flattery is nice, but even that’s a little different. He remembers the hero worship and it makes him feel like a scum bag, but he misses that. He remembers the old days when Bam made going to bed with Ville seem like attending church. That was…that was the best feeling in the world.

“You know I went on tour with My Chemical Romance. Probably when you were still in diapers. Gerard Way is a funny guy,” Ville jokes. 

“Do you always name drop during sex,” Seth asks, and Ville blushes for the first time since he got over interviewers asking him what it was like selling dildos. 

“Are we having sex,” Ville asks playfully, and he’s actually really shocked when Seth yanks at his underwear and says, “I’m trying here, man. What about you?”

To be honest, Ville sort of feels like a pedophile through the whole thing. Seth’s ID puts him at eighteen and legal, but is eighteen really old enough to decide you want to go down on some thirty-something year old guy on your soul searching trip before university? And although Ville thinks it’s wrong, he still spreads his legs and latches on to brown curls with his unsteady hand while he urges the boy down, deeper, faster.

He feels a little bit better that the Seth knows what he’s doing. At least he isn’t the first. 

But while he’s getting blown, he notices that everything doesn’t add up. Usually when someone sucks his cock his brain sort of checks out on him. It comes back long enough to reciprocate or start a second round after he comes, but that’s about it. But this time, he’s alert and aware, and he’s thinking way too much.

He’s thinking that he misses the irritating jangle of bracelets and the equally obnoxious soundtrack of his own band to go along with it.

To put it simply, Ville’s fucked.

He’s clearly taking too long to come, because Seth pulls off, takes a deep breath, and strokes over Ville’s hip.

“Hey,” is all he says.

“One of the perks of being with an older guy,” Ville says slowly, stroking his thumb over Seth’s bottom lip. “It takes us longer to come.”

After Seth bites Ville’s thumb, he laughs. “Nah, that’s not it. I’m pretty sure you’re just distracted.”

Ville tries to deny it, but he doesn’t have the energy. He just sighs and drops his hand down to trace over Seth’s clavicle. 

“So… _who are you trying to forget?”_

Bam’s face flashes in Ville’s mind, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he takes charge for the first time in a long time, lays his pretty boy back, and they get off in the simplest way possible. Ville rubs up against Seth, feeling his cock drag against the crease of his thigh, his smooth belly, and across his equally hard cock. It feels so good, and it’s so easy. He wants to kiss him, but he knows full well that Seth was out drinking last night. Ville’s own mouth tastes sour, he imagines that Seth tastes like old whiskey and fresh cock, not exactly Ville’s favorite combination. 

After they both come, Seth clings a little, but Ville’s okay with it. He hasn’t been in a relationship in a long time and he rather likes the intimacy. He kisses the ball of his shoulder, right under his ear. Seth seems more preoccupied with rubbing his nose against Ville’s pulse point, nuzzling, not unlike a puppy. Bam used to do that too.

They stay like that for most of the day, taking time to eat and shower, but Seth ends up back in Ville’s bed in the evening. 

“You could totally pretend that I’m him, or whatever. I wouldn’t be offended. It’s actually kind of hot. And like, surprisingly adult and adventurous for me. It would be like roleplaying or something. Only instead of working out our kinks, you get to work out your psychological hurdle and I get to pretend I’m…can I say it? Will you freak out if I say it?”

Ville shudders, turns his head, and feels like the biggest pervert on the planet. “You can…you can say it.”

Seth crawls over Ville and rubs his lips over Ville’s ear. “I’m Bam Margera. What will I do next?” He waits, just for a second, and Ville thinks that maybe he’s anticipating Ville to freak out. He sort of is, but he’s good at hiding it. “Whatever the fuck I want,” Seth finally finishes. “Or rather, whatever the fuck you want.”

Ville sighs, ruffles Seth’s hair, then rolls them over. “Fine. Fine. But later, I’ll pretend to be Gerard Way or something. Just…this can’t go one way.”

In turn, Seth wraps his leg around Ville’s waist and puts his hands behind his head like some kind of spoiled brat. Like Bam would, Ville stops to think. “I’ll think of something.”

**Here’s Looking At You, Kid - The Gaslight Anthem**   


Bam doesn’t know why he just smoked up, because he fucking hates it. It makes him tired, and paranoid, and to be honest, he doesn’t want to be hungry because he doesn’t want to fill up on empty calories. His metabolism just isn’t what it used to be. But the thing is, he can’t shut his head up. He figured if he smoked a bowl he’d be mellow, lazy, too sleepy to think. He was so fucking wrong.

Bam’s going to blame Frantz for this whole thing. He was the one who got the bright idea to watch High Fidelity. He probably has a boner for John Cusack or something, Bam thinks. If Bam had it his way, they would have watched Conair. At least John Cusack has balls and explodes a bunch of shit. In High Fidelity he just walks around being a hypocritical douche bag that talks to his old girlfriends.

Which makes Bam think of all his old girlfriends. 

The first was Charlotte Fields. They were twelve and Bam was sort of still on the fence about girls having cooties. But then when he heard Novak made out with a girl under the bleachers, Bam was sold. He was going to try to cop a feel, because even if he wasn’t convinced about the whole ‘yeah, girls!’ mission, he wanted to one up his friend. 

Charlotte Fields was the perfect choice. She was pretty, she didn’t wear stupid clothes, and she was never too shy to sing along with the radio when they all hung out at the park downtown. He picked her because she was normal, and because she didn’t mind that Bam was three inches shorter than her, which a lot of the girls weren’t really into. 

It started the summer before middle school. Basically, it wasn’t that important. They sat next to each other, sometimes held hands when they walked from one park to another, and he walked her home at night. On the way, if she was into it, they’d make out casually behind a bush until the mosquitoes started ravaging them. 

Bam thought that things were going pretty well, but when he walked into his first day of middle school, she acted like she didn’t even know who he was. There were new kids, different people, and apparently she was more interested in meeting those new people than writing Bam’s name on her notebooks. He was oddly disappointed. It didn’t help that his friends teased him mercilessly about it. 

He shouldn’t have been quite so excited when she ended up getting really fat and dating the guy who handled the lighting for drama club performances in high school, but he did. Last he heard they lived in Reading Pennsylvania. They have four kids, a minivan, she works at a bank, and he’s a carpet salesman. He bets they don’t even have sex anymore. Serves her right. 

Bam fucked around a lot in high school. A lot of those girls are so insignificant that he kind of ignores them. It’s sad, but true. The next girl that really mattered was one he met on the road. He was young, just seventeen and freshly dropped out of high school, but it meant something. 

She wore high laced Doc Martins and hung out at a Chicago skate park where Bam had a demo. She had pale skin and a black umbrella to keep it that way. She seemed special, and when Bam came up to her after his set sweaty and flushed, she seemed so fucking unimpressed that Bam couldn’t resist her. 

It said Karen on her birth certificate, but she didn’t answer to anything but K. She said it sounded cryptic. Bam thought it was pretty simple, but he was into her and her short black skirt and fishnet tights, so he kept his mouth shut. He was interested in getting into those tights. And if he had to talk about Marilyn Manson and Anne Rice to get there, he would. 

But the thing was, she was from Chicago and Bam had roots in West Chester. They communicated through emails and phone calls. She used to send her bad poetry through the mail on scented paper she bought at renaissance fairs. Everybody said he was crazy when he showed them her picture and claimed that she was his ‘girlfriend,’ but she was. 

At night, when K was supposed to be sleeping so she passed her Bio test the next day, she used to beg Bam to come and get her. She hated Chicago and everyone who lived there. She hated her parents most of all. They seemed like alright people to Bam, her dad wore polo shirts and her mom drove a Volvo. “Exactly,” she would hiss over the line. Bam never had the heart to tell her that he had family that grew up in a trailer park under power lines. She just wouldn’t have understood. 

In the end she broke up with him in a letter. It was on the same fancy paper that she used to send her poetry on. It said what Bam figured people always said in long distance relationships. “The distance is killing me.” “You don’t feel real.” “I need something more.”

He never called. For some reason he preferred to be dumped in a letter than over the phone. It seemed a little nicer. Still, every time he saw a pair of scuffed docs and fishnets, something tugged at his heart. He might not have loved K, but he liked her a lot. He liked that she liked him, even though he wasn’t her type. 

A few years ago she friended him on Myspace. She still lives in Chicago, but she does Renaissance Fairs full time. It’s probably shit money, but at least it gets her out of Chicago once in a while, he supposes. Out of all his exes, she’s one of the few that he wishes the best for. He hopes that she’s happy. He hopes that she thinks of him sometimes. And yeah, he kind of hopes that he’s the most exciting thing that happened in her life. 

He could talk about the floozies and the crazies. He could certainly talk about Jen. But right now he’s fixated on the thing that drove him mad.

Her name was Jessica Simpson. 

She was dumb as a fucking post, but in like, a totally adorable way? It was hard to explain. She was funny without trying, without meaning to be, and Bam was kind of like that sometimes too. She made an ass out of herself for money and that was something that Bam could relate to. Most people think that they just fucked, but that’s not true. They had a few dinners, talking about what it was like having the world think you were stupid.

The fucking came later. The fucking came later because Bam took her to a Metal Skool concert and she got so drunk that it seemed like a good idea. Bam had whiskey dick so he barely gave it to her. Neither of them came, so it was sort of like it didn’t count. 

After that, whenever they were supposed to meet, she’d bail on him. He’d end up sitting at some up tight restaurant eating sushi that cost more than the mortgage on his parent’s first house all by himself. She’d text him later saying that she was sorry, but Bam didn’t think she really ever meant it.

They hooked up a few more times. Once, Bam was sober enough to redeem himself. He got her off three times just to prove he could. He probably would have went down for a fourth, but she wasn’t into it. There was something strangely powerful about tiring out a pop star. 

But even after the admittedly fantastic sex and bonding over being the ass of every joke, she didn’t stick with him. 

She was America’s sweetheart and technically still married. And even though that marriage was failing, Bam was pretty sure that it didn’t make a difference.

That breakup was different than any other. Instead of talking to Bam, she did something drastic, she pulled the plug and changed her number.

Somehow the paparazzi still got their hands on the story. Bam’s not exactly how, because even though it kept him up at night, he never leaked it. It aches that she probably still thinks he did.

He denied it at first. But then, after her publicist drove his name through the mud and told the world that the idea of Jessica Simpson fucking Bam Margera was hilarious, well - Bam couldn’t be blamed for his actions. He told Howard Stern that he fucked her. He left out the other shit though, because he didn’t want anyone to know that there were feelings involved. 

There were feelings involved though.

She’s married to some rich football player now and he’s mostly happy for her. Sometimes he sees her on TMZ and they talk about how fat she’s getting. He feels bad for her, but she made her bed into pop princess stardom, she knows how to comfortably lie in it.

He got married after Jessica. It was easy to marry one of the nice girls he dated back in the day and call her his high school sweetheart. It made for a great story and even better television. It worked for a year or two. It worked until it didn’t.

Bam’s still thinking of all the ways that it didn’t work when he feels a magazine hit him in the face.

“I hate it when you smoke up in the house,” the accented voice tells him. Bam can’t help it, he smiles.

“What are you still doing up?”

Bam shrugs and moves his legs so that Ville can sit down. When he does, Bam doesn’t hesitate before he sprawls out over Ville’s thighs.

“Thinking about that stupid movie,” Bam admits.

Ville massages Bam’s thigh, then rubs his sore knee.

“I know. We should have watched Being John Malcovich.”

Bam can’t help it. He totally laughs. Bam picked Conair and Ville picked Being John Malcovich. They couldn’t be more different if they tried. They work though.

“Hey. Promise me something,” Bam asks, sitting up so he’s sitting next to Ville and resting his head on his shoulder.

“Anything.”

“Just…promise me you won’t end up on my shitty breakup list, okay?”

Ville nods and kisses the top of Bam’s head.

“That’s not going to happen.”

They go to bed after that. Bam can’t sleep, but he’s pretty okay with the alternative. After all, it’s hard for him to think about anything else when he watches him sleep. He just hopes that he gets to watch him sleep forever. 

**Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met) - Panic! At The Disco  
(This is a Nine In The Afternoon companion piece. It probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t read it.)**   


Bam will never forget the first time he met Ville Valo. 

Well, technically they didn’t really meet.

See, Ville had the unfortunate luck of running into a sleepy Novak on his first day of high school. There were heated words exchanged, pale faces, and the smell of fear. 

And even though Bam didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Ville before, he knew exactly who he was. He had the same accent as Jesse Valo, his older brother’s new best friend. And that…well, that sucked. Because this guy was hot, and adorable, and he was never going to trust Bam because Bam knew Jesse first. 

It was okay though, because even though Ville wanted nothing to do with him, Bam was still friends with Jesse. Bam got to hang out at the Valo house, he pressed for information on Ville carefully, and he saw him around school. Even if they weren’t friends, Bam felt good being around Ville. It was a little stalker-ish, but whatever, it wasn’t like he was swiping the guy’s underwear out of their laundry room. Okay, so maybe he stole a t-shirt once, but that was totally warranted. Jesse sprayed him with the hose and his own shirt was soaked. He grabbed one of Ville’s, it was just a little too tight for him and obviously already worn. It smelled like _him,_ like spicy deodorant and scared boy. It seriously turned Bam on. 

The guy couldn’t catch a break, though. Like, he wasn’t exactly a total reject, but the fact that he and Brendon Urie clung together, it made them easy targets. Jesse pretty much told everyone to leave Ville alone, but when that didn’t work, Bam stepped in. 

He couldn’t count the fights he got in over Ville. It wasn’t anything huge. The first time was when some soccer player called Ville a fag in the hall. Bam didn’t think twice before he punched him in the face and told him to never say it again. The guy cried a little, swore he’d never do it again, but it wasn’t enough. Bam made sure that no one in the high school would sell him weed ever again, not even to his friends. The poor bastard and his buddies had to drive all the way to the King Of Prussia mall just to get a fix after that. And those guys? Those guys charged extra, because anyone who couldn’t get a dime bag at their own school was obviously a tool who deserved to pay the forty percent _convenience_ charge. 

After the first year, Bam figured he’d get over it. He’d get bored of Ville Valo, the snob who obviously wanted nothing to do with him. But that was also sort of the appeal of Ville. The more Bam tried, the more Ville pushed him away. It was like he was stuck in some fucked up romance novel. Novak kept telling him that there was something wrong with his wiring that he got off on some dude telling him no. He was probably right, but Bam didn’t pay attention. After all, what did Novak know about anything?

Bam wasn’t a saint though, as much as he tried. He couldn’t stay celibate for years waiting for Ville to pull his head out of his ass and realize that Bam was in fact a catch. So he kept fucking people. Mostly girls. Always brunettes. Always taller than him. They never looked quite like Ville, because he was just so fucking pretty and had green eyes that shouldn’t have been real. But yeah, that’s what he did. He picked up chicks who he could close his eyes and pretend they were Ville. Most of the time they didn’t care either way. They were usually just stoked that they got to sit in CKY’s practice space and maybe make it into the background of one of his infamous Youtube videos. 

But even while Bam fooled around with these girls, Ville was always on the periphery. He was sitting next to him in Biology, he was walking a step in front of him in the hall, he was tutoring him in English. Ville always smelled so good. It made it really hard to concentrate. The fact that Bam could pay attention at all when Ville was reading to him was impressive. 

When he got home, Bam would lock himself in the bathroom and jerk off smelling his own shirt. It would smell like Ville, himself, and the whole Valo house. It was all Bam ever wanted. And even if the fantasy wasn’t real, he knew that someday it could be, if he just didn’t give up.

Because he was never giving up.

And it paid off, because one day at the height of his frustration, Ville pulled off his shirt and looked at him with an expression that Bam had never seen before. It said ‘it’s okay,’ and ‘no, I mean it. I really want it this time.’ 

Bam didn’t need discarded shirts and lingering scents anymore, he had everything.

But he was pretty sure that he was never going to get immune to the way that Ville smelled. It was something etched into his brain. 

For better or worse, Ville was Bam’s very favorite drug. 

**Don’t Stop Believing - Journey**   


Bam Margera grew up in West Chester Pennsylvania. He kept quiet, but he felt like he was cheated. With his old man working as a baker and his mom cutting hair for mostly tips, there wasn’t a whole lot of money to go around. They didn’t have the cash to send him to college and he knew he wouldn’t get a scholarship, so he sort of gave up on school. It pissed him off that his older brother got away with all the talent, drumming for a locally relevant band. But those were the breaks, he figured. You either had it or you didn’t. 

He stayed in school long enough to graduate, getting his diploma by the skin of his teeth and some ‘volunteered’ community service. 

But to be honest, graduation wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Graduation didn’t mean freedom for Bam, it seemed like another prison sentence. He had to look for a nine to five job that would hopefully get him out of his parent’s house someday.

It was when his old man offered him a job at the bakery that he got the courage to do something for himself. 

He knew that if he didn’t do something soon, that he’d die in West Chester. He took what little money he’d been given for graduation and bought a one way bus ticket to LA. There was a fifty-fifty chance that he would call in two weeks and beg his mother to send him enough money to get home, but it was a risk he was willing to take. 

Little did he know, he wasn’t alone. On the other side of the world there was someone almost like him.

Ville Valo was special, he knew it, he just couldn’t get the rest of the world to turn their head. He was a musician, a writer, and he was a character. 

Unfortunately Helsinki didn’t hold the big break that he was holding his breath for. He had almost tasted success, had been close enough to touch a recording studio, but it all fizzled out.

Without a band, Ville was fucked. And even if he got one, he didn’t want to be Finland’s claim to fame. He wanted to take the world by storm.

After a year of selling porn and sex toys for his daddy, Ville left for Los Angeles. His parents weren’t very supportive. Unlike some impulsive young people, he knew he wasn’t going to be welcomed home with open arms. He was doing this against his daddy’s wishes, his command, and behind his back. 

It wasn’t a total cliché. They didn’t meet their first day in LA.

Bam did construction during the day and bussed tables at night for three months before he met Ville.

By that time Ville had already been a telemarketer and a bartender for six months. 

When they met, it wasn’t on the best of terms. They were fighting for the same seat on a city bus.

“Fuck off, man. I worked two jobs today,” Bam said. He smelled like shit and his arms ached. There was no way he was going to hold onto the rail from the city proper back to his shitty apartment in Silver Lake. 

“What makes you think I didn’t,” Ville asked, all but glaring at the guy. He was trying to use his height to edge him away from the chair. LA folks were crazy, Ville had learned. They’d stab you four the twelve dollars in your wallet. The scary part was, Ville was starting to understand them. Ville was ready to strangle a stranger for an unpadded seat on a bus, of all things!

“You’re too pretty,” the guy remarked, which wasn’t smart, considering Ville was already contemplating bodily harm.

Ville was just seconds from shoving him on the floor when the guy wiggled his way under Ville’s arm and into the chair. Ville sighed like his heart was breaking.

“If you really want, I’ll let you sit in my lap,” Bam said. His tone was joking. 

There was absolutely nothing funny about it when Ville did just that. 

“Uh, I was kidding.”

Ville just rolled his eyes and tried to keep his weight evenly distributed.

“Today I spent my entire morning trying to sell the LA Times to people who don’t read newspapers over the phone. Seriously, who reads the newspaper anymore? After that I changed into an outfit that makes me look like a street hustler to tend bar at the slowest bar in all of Los Angeles. I don’t care if you were kidding, I’m sitting down.”

Bam was about to tell Ville about his own day of knocking down dry wall that was possibly infested with asbestos, only to go to a restaurant and clear tables that had items on the menu that he’ll never be able to afford again, but instead he squeezed Ville’s thigh and helped to support his back.

“I’m Bam,” he said.

“Ville. Though I won’t lie, I’m not pleased to meet you.”

Ville got off the bus two stops away from Bam’s, but for some reason Bam followed him home. It just felt right, kind of like leaving West Chester did.

Ville’s apartment was marginally better than Bam’s, with two fewer roommates, so Bam started spending a lot of his time there. He listened to the songs Ville wrote, encouraged him to play them, (though he could never make it to the open mic nights because of his job), and introduced him to his future guitar player.

Bam always felt kind of shitty, because there was nothing for Ville to inspire Bam to do. He didn’t have talent, he didn’t have big dreams, he just wanted to scrape by. But that Ville did help with. Whenever Bam felt like he was about to call home and go crawling back to his parents, Ville stepped in. He would loan Bam the sixty bucks to pay the electric, he’d feed him when he looked starving, and he promised things would get better.

It took them nine months to figure out that they were dating. Ville’s roommates teased them about it all the time, but they always told them to fuck off. But one day, Ville got laid off from his telemarketing job. He worried about how he was going to make rent, how he was going to keep his visa, and how he was going to eat that night. Bam slipped in, easy as always, and told him not to worry about it.

“I’ll move in with you. We can share your room and cut both our rents in half. It makes perfect sense.”

After sharing a double bed for three days, they started having sex. Only then did they realize that Ville’s roommates were right all along.

They’d been dating without the sex for months.

“Dude. I work two jobs. Even if I did have time to fuck you, I’m too tired half the time,” Bam said.

And that much was true. They didn’t have crazy sex like you see in movies and TV. They made each other peanut butter and banana sandwiches and carefully reminded their partner to shower. 

It was tough, but it worked. 

And always there was the promise. It’s going to get better.

In a city of bright lights and bigger dreams, Ville mostly believed things would change. Bam was just comforted to know that when Ville got his big break, Ville wouldn’t leave him in the gutter. 

At some point Ville’s success became Bam’s. And that…that was worth taking a risk for. 

**The End!**


End file.
